Lying Scoreboards in a Make or Miss League

A+ theory

Doug Collins can be very hit or miss as an announcer, which is ironic because by sheer repetition he ingrained in me the axiom that the NBA is a "make or miss league". The best defense in the world won't matter on the nights Carmelo Anthony goes IDKFA and starts tossing in 22 footers off the dribble with 2 guys on him. Some nights, you miss breakaway layups.

Over the course of a season, players will generally make the proportion of shots they should as in the long run (before we're dead that is), the good luck and the bad will basically cancel out. However, in a short span, the results of one game can swing dramatically on teams hitting tough shots or missing easy ones. For example, this afternoon, Phoenix handled Orlando fairly comfortably, 104-96. However, while half-watching the game, I noticed Phoenix hitting a lot of shots and Orlando not so much. And while shot-making is a of course a skill (the first skill, really) of being good at basketball some days are better than others.

Diving into the box score, the difference in the game could be seen as large a result of the Suns superior three point shooting, where they hit 11 of 29 to the Magic's 6 of 21. However, as Orlando is a better three point shooting team on the season, it's not hard to imagine the relative percentages being reversed. Suddenly both teams have hit 8 threes and instead of losing by 8, the Magic would have won by 7, all else being equal. Now we can't know how plausible this is until looking at all the threes to see if maybe Phoenix hit more of them because they were getting looks. So I did. First, all of Phoenix's releases (video):

While it's hard to tell from stills how "good" a lot of these looks are, Phoenix was not getting categorically "better" shoots off. In fact, unscientifically defined, Orlando had about 10 wide open, in rhythm 3PA, whereas Phoenix only had about 5, give or take (note that some of the releases which look pretty uncovered in the still shots were actually off the dribble, in transition, or otherwise off-balance/non-rhythm shots.)

Now none of this is me arguing the Magic"should" have won this game, first because it's Phoenix and Orlando in November and why should I care enough to form an opinion? Second because this is only one slice of the game taken in isolation and how these plays fit in with the rest of the game matters. What I am claiming is that sometimes when a team "handled", "dominated" or "crushed" another team, it wasn't because Team A is that much better than Team B, or even played that much better overall on the given night. It could just mean one team made more shots than usual and the other team didn't.